Notes on Miners' Houses (1875)

This series of reports was published in the Glasgow Herald in 1875. One further report was published on 11 March 1875 describing miners houses at Dalton-In-Furness, Lancashire, England - this will be added when time permits.

Introduction - From Part I

Mr Alex. M'Donald spoke out recently. and with characteristic emphasis, in reference to the condition of miners' houses in Scotland. He declared them to be in many cases no better than pig-styes, and indicated his intention of seeking to have them improved. With this view, we believe he has sent out to mining districts in England printed circulars containing a number of queries relative to the water supply, drainage, and the prevailing sanitary and social arrangements, and is about to circulate similar interrogative leaflets amongst the villages of Scotland. We are glad for once in a way to be found in the same lobby, to use the Parliamentary phrase, with the hon. member for Stafford; and as the method which he has adopted for getting at the hard facts of the case, the only course he could well follow, necessarily implies delay, we have thought it right, since the subject is one in which the public generally are interested, to instruct one of our staff to make a run through several of the mining villages, and procure at once such information as the miners themselves or their employers are able to furnish. In an inquiry of this kind, it is of course impossible to obtain statistics which are as reliable as the returns of the Registrar-General; but on the other hand, personal visitation enables one to see the dwellings of our mining population in their broad, every-day aspects, and to glean facts which are not officially procurable. It is not the purpose of our correspondent, in. what follows, to write merely picturesque sketches or tell harrowing stories of the sufferings of the sick and the poor, or to propose any special scheme by which homes may be made sweet and wholesome. His duty is simply to state with perfect impartiality what came under his own observation in passing through villages where the miners dwell in comfortable houses, as well as others where families are reared amid dirt and squalor. We subjoin his Notes. [Glasgow Herald 11 January 1875]